The Seventh Day Read Online Free

The Seventh Day
Book: The Seventh Day Read Online Free
Author: Yu Hua
Pages:
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look after him better, I had sold our apartment, handed in my notice, and bought a little shop near the hospital. Later, my father left without saying goodbye and disappeared in the endless sea of people, so I gave up the shop and moved into a cheap rental, searching for my father despite all the odds stacked against me. I had roamed through every corner of the city, scanning men’s features wherever I went, but my father’s face always eluded me.
    With the loss of work and apartment and shop, my determination flagged. As my savings dwindled, I needed to find a way to support myself, for I was only forty-one, with plenty of time ahead of me. Through an agency involved with extramural education I found a job as a tutor.
    Amity Street was where my first pupil lived. When I initially placed a call to her father, from the other end of the line came a hoarse and hesitant voice. The girl’s name was Zheng Xiaomin, her father said; his daughter was a good student, now in fourth grade. He and his wife worked in a factory, for a low income, so it was difficult for them to afford my proposed fifty-yuan-an-hour fee for tutoring their daughter. Hearing a helplessness in his voice that sounded a lot like my own, I suggested he pay me thirty yuan an hour instead, and after a moment he said “Thank you” three times.
    We arranged that I would teach the first lesson at four o’clock in the afternoon. I got my hair cut, then went home and had a shave, changed into clean clothes, and put on a cotton overcoat. My overcoat was old, and so were the clothes I wore underneath.
    I arrived on Amity Street, in an area I knew well. I knew where up ahead there was a supermarket and where to find Starbucks, McDonald’s, and KFC, where there was a street lined with fashion boutiques and where to go for Chinese food.
    After I passed these businesses, everything suddenly became unfamiliar. The three six-story apartment buildings that used to overlook Amity Street were now just a heap of ruins. The apartment that I was due to visit for the tutorial session would have been in the second block.
    The three buildings had still been standing when I passed this way a few days earlier, with laundry hung out to dry on the balconies and white banners hanging from some of the windows. In big black characters the banners read: “We firmly resist forcible demolition,” “We are opposed to violent demolition,” and “We will defend our homes to the death.”
    As I gazed at the ruins, I could dimly make out a few items of clothing caught among the tangle of steel rods and broken concrete. Two excavators and two trucks were stopped nearby, along with a police car in which four policemen sat with the engine running.
    A young girl in a red down jacket was sitting alone on a concrete slab, from which severed steel rods jutted out in twisted shapes at both ends. Her satchel was resting on her knees and a textbook and exercise book were lying open on her lap; she was bending down to write something. She had walked out of her own building when she left for school that morning, but it was gone when she came back at the end of the day, and there was no sign of her parents. She sat in the ruins waiting for them to come home, doing her homework and shivering in the cold.
    Swaying awkwardly on the debris, I made my way over to where she was. When she raised her head, I saw a face scoured red by the wind.
    “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.
    “Yes, I am,” she replied.
    I pointed at the KFC nearby. “It’ll be warm inside,” I said. “Why not do your homework there?”
    She shook her head. “My mom and dad wouldn’t be able to find me when they come back.”
    She lowered her head again and went back to doing her homework on the table she had made with her legs. I scanned the ruins.
    “Do you know where Zheng Xiaomin lives?” I asked her.
    “Right here.” She pointed at where she was sitting. “I am Zheng Xiaomin.”
    Seeing her surprise at my knowing her name, I
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